religion, the State, law, morality, language, and art were brought
under the searchlight of reason and reduced to simple and self-evident
principles. Human institutions were measured according to their
reasonableness; whatever was not rational had no _raison d'être_;
to demolish the natural and historical in order to make room for
the rational became the practical ideal of the day. Enlightenment
emphasized the worth and dignity of the human individual, it sought to
deliver him from the slavery of authority and tradition, to make him
self-reliant in thought and action, to obtain for him his natural
rights, to secure his happiness and perfection in a world expressly
made for him, and to guarantee the continuance of his personal
existence in the life to come. In Germany this great movement found
expression in a popular commonsense philosophy which proved the
existence of God, freedom, and immortality, and conceived the universe
as a rational order designed by an all-wise and all-good Creator for
the benefit of man, his highest product; while other thinkers regarded
Spinozism as the only rational system, indeed as the last word of all
speculative metaphysics; for them logical thought necessarily led to
pantheism and determinism. In France, after reaching its climax in
Voltaire, it ended in materialism, atheism, and fatalism; and in
England, where it had developed the empiricism of Locke, it came to
grief in the scepticism of Hume. If we can know only our impressions,
then rational theology, cosmology, and psychology are impossible, and
it is futile to philosophize about God, the world, and the human soul.
Consistently carried out, the logical-mathematical method seemed to
land the intellect in Spinozism or in materialism--in either case to
catch man in the causal machinery of nature. In this dilemma many were
tempted to throw reason overboard as an instrument of ultimate
truth, and to seek for certainty through other functions of the human
soul--in feeling, faith, or mystical vision of some sort; the claims